Not the Moon, but parachutes are routinely used on Mars to slow the vehicle down to a reasonable velocity that can be arrested by a rocket motor burn without expending ungodly amounts of fuel.
Posted on 03/30/2021 6:53:55 AM PDT by Red Badger
A SpaceX Starship rocket flies high above South Texas on Tuesday, minutes before the test flight crashed and exploded in fog below. Photo courtesy of SpaceX
March 30 (UPI) -- A fourth Starship rocket prototype for Elon Musk's SpaceX launch company exploded after a test flight on Tuesday morning in South Texas.
As with previous test flights, SpaceX flew Starship -- model SN11 -- to over 6 miles high above the launch facility about 180 miles south of Corpus Christi. The rocket then glided on wing flaps back to the launch pad.
Heavy fog and problems with the video feed made it unclear exactly what happened, but SpaceX engineer John Insprucker confirmed the explosion.
"Well, looks like we've had another exciting test of Starship ... A reminder again, this is a test series to gather data," Insprucker said during SpaceX's live broadcast.
Previous test flights of the giant, stainless steel rocket ended in fireballs in December, February and March. The last attempt, on March 3, featured an upright landing but a fire on the rocket's base caused an explosion moments later.
The tests are part of SpaceX's rapid prototype development methods, which the company used to develop its highly successful Falcon rockets.
Landing and reusing the rocket is key to Starship's proposed interplanetary use, according to the company. The rocket is roughly the height of a 14-story building.
RELATED SpaceX aims to nail landing on flight of moonship that exploded on last 3 tries Starship is "designed to carry both crew and cargo on long-duration, interplanetary flights and help humanity return to the Moon, and travel to Mars and beyond," according to SpaceX.
Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with a stated goal of reducing spaceflight costs to enable human exploration of Mars.
Starship is one of three spacecraft NASA has chosen as possible means to send astronauts back to the moon this decade. The space agency intends to choose two proposals for those crewed lunar missions by mid-2021.
This launch was supposed to go yesterday but the FAA forgot to check his email and didn’t show up, and so SpaceX was forced to cancel.
Yes. SPACEX needs to learn from NASA and the DOD and pay standing armies of people to stand by and wait for endless administrative reviews to prevent anything ever going wrong. This business of making folks test and test and test until they get it right. is just not the way to go. It’s un-American.
Meetings, patient detailed engineering analysis and serious re-evaluation are a lot cheaper than “let’s shoot off another one and see what happens!”
SpaceX officials revealed that they had not updated to iOS 14.4.2 prior to the launch.
JK
Not the Moon, but parachutes are routinely used on Mars to slow the vehicle down to a reasonable velocity that can be arrested by a rocket motor burn without expending ungodly amounts of fuel.
LOL!.......................
The point is, check the weather guys.
Right now the problem is landing in Earth without the BOOM. LOL
Elon Musk is no doubt a great man. Yet his desire to take a one way trip to Mars reflects a not so subtle death wish and severe conflict about the meaning of his life on earth. His accomplishments should be analyzed to contain flaws and strategies that will result in their ultimate failure.
The guy footing the bill for all this thinks that's wrong and he's been proving it for years.
I’m a huge fan of Space (and SpaceX) but this is kind of a hard blow. They need a pretty drastic change. I’m pretty sure Elon can, but I really can’t see any way for people to be getting on this is 3 or 4 years to go around the moon. They’ll probably need tons of successful landings and they still have to get re-entry down. In fact, they’re going to orbit next time apparently to start testing that.
But this has been a pretty bumpy ride. It’s pretty uncharted though. The worse part, to me, is they barely seem to be improving each time. With Falcon 9 they had a few crashes, then landing failures, and now it’s one of the safest and best rockets you can get.
Good thing SpaceX has Tesla and Starlink money coming. I don’t think Nasa/military/commercial launching alone could fund this.
One tiny bit of space debris would make a nasty hole in the parachute above Mars.
In the immortal words of Casey Stengel (referring to the then expansion team Mets) “Can’t anyone here play this game?”
We will get folks to the Moon and Mars, but it is going to take a _lot_ longer than anyone will like....and there will be a lot more casualties than anyone will like.
Or Apollo 12 which was struck by lightening twice just after launch.
My off the cuff sarcastic comment has taken on a life of it’s own. Another reason I enjoy Posting here. #;^)
Me standing in the Cornfield, that Starship blowed up real good.
Think of all the Deloreans they could have made with all that Stainless Steel.
Earth is one of the most unforgiving environments for this sort of testing. If they can perfect it here, landing on the moon or Mars will be a piece of cake.
I’m waiting for the Starlink IPO. Buy!
They’re supposed to cut from the 3 current moon landers to 1 or 2 pretty soon. Maybe in days. This probably isn’t going to help Musk’s chances on that. The other landers are much more conventional.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.